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say it: pahyl
pile is a noun and verb meaning "a collection of objects laid on top of each other". It is pronounced /ˈpaɪl/ — pahyl. It carries 11 recorded senses.
a collection of objects laid on top of each other
(often followed by `of') a large number or amount or extent
“a batch of letters”
“a deal of trouble”
“a lot of money”
“he made a mint on the stock market”
“see the rest of the winners in our huge passel of photos”
“it must have cost plenty”
“a slew of journalists”
“a wad of money”
battery consisting of voltaic cells arranged in series; the earliest electric battery devised by Volta
a column of wood or steel or concrete that is driven into the ground to provide support for a structure
a nuclear reactor that uses controlled nuclear fission to generate energy
place or lay as if in a pile
“The teacher piled work on the students until the parents protested”
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for pile come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.